The Father had to vomit
“And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.” (Lev. 18:25).
Our Creator has built into the human frame a wonderful resource for object lessons. Jesus made use of this resource in all of His teachings. He put into the human body His image, which is His Father’s image. This makes us special, not by way of anything we’ve done, but simply by inheritance.
One of our built-in revelations of the Father is in the vomit reflex. Probably thousands of times each day around planet Earth, people eat something that upsets their stomach. They try to cope with the agony and hope to wait it out. They don’t want to vomit because vomiting tastes so horrible, so they wait in the hope that their body can resolve the upsetness by its own metabolism.
But, at length, the stomach having received no relief, the undesirable measure must be invoked. So, the sufferer gets a large bowl, and puts his mouth over it; yet often nothing happens. As badly as he wants to expel the poison in his tummy, his stomach cannot relieve itself. It has no will of its own; the brain must give it the command to regurgitate, but the brain remembers the revolting taste of vomit. The stomach needs an advocate for the brain.
So the man tries to encourage the stomach in its regurgitation reflex by coughing or dry heaving. This may or may not overcome the mind’s regret of the soon-coming bad taste in the mouth and move the stomach to heave up its putrid contents.
But if that doesn’t work, then the owner must put a wooden depressor or his finger down his throat to create a gagging reflex which is part of the whole vomit sequence, and then the signal goes to the stomach to throw up and rid itself of the substance that was wreaking havoc to the whole body.
Sin is selfishness. It uses others; it is wholly opportunistic. It feeds on others without reciprocating. Everything and everyone around it is nothing more than a host to live off of. Furthermore, it’s a disease that saps the vitality and leaves nothing in return; it’s a tapeworm that lives to starve its host. Without the constant supply from the donor, sin dies; but until its death it draws incessantly from all around, killing them and then moving on to more victims, leaving a wide swath of desolation. “Destruction and misery are in their ways: and the way of peace have they not known.” (Rom. 3:16,17). They are takers and not givers, not even thank-you givers. Sin makes men “lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, … unthankful, unholy,” “without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful.” (2Tim. 3:2;Rom. 1:31).
God hates sin. It has no place in His thoughts or His character or His will; and it has no place in His kingdom of saints. Its entrance has created the most intense turmoil to Him who is infinitely pure and self-forgetful. His soul has raged quietly since iniquity sprung up in the heart of its very first victim, Lucifer. God has shifted His government into high gear in response to its presence in His kingdom. His living room, the throne of the universe, has turned into a command and control room for battle, a war room, a damage control central, a triage unit for emergency surgery and decontamination, a sanctuary to quarantine infinite holiness and keep the pristine sinlessness and perfection of heaven untouched and uninfected by the spiritual virus of selfishness, to stanch the spread of rebellion.
Earth is situated in His front yard, just down the way in the galaxy we share. The presence of sin on Earth, right on front row of His auditorium, is an inescapable grief that loads Him down with a perpetual wracking pain. Human thought can never comprehend the infinite abhorrence and loathing that self-centered existence thrusts before Him. Sin is revoltingly unnatural to His creation, yet He must live in sin’s din, its stench, its horror.
But as much as God hates sin, He cannot stop wanting to be with His human carriers of the filthy disease. He loves them. So God has been bound in self-made torment by keeping our poisonous race alive. Between His loathing of sin and His desire to keep His faulty human race, this conflict, this infinite tension only the Son of God could understand. God’s human race is so precious to Him that He designed a way to reclaim them. Those who would choose can be reclaimed and reinstated after He had thrust them from His sight. But, far from an easy venture, He has devised the means “that His banished be not expelled from Him.” (2Sam. 14:14).
The plan for man’s salvation required God’s beloved Son to take the form of man which God could not look upon without convulsing in infinite nausea, lamentations, mourning, and woe. Were it not for the great desire to have us back in His bosom, He would not have let His Son forever lose “the body of heaven in his clearness” (Ex. 24:10). In man’s form the Son would intervene in resolving the King’s overwhelming pain. The Father could not self-medicate or doctor Himself to reconciliation with sin. But by His Son, the only human His Father could trust and rest in, Christ brought His Father to where He could safely void His kingdom of the children He loved but who preferred the lust for sin over the love for holiness and purity—a difficult judgment that required an advocate. The Son took upon Himself the work of restoring His character in all the sinners who chose to be humbled and to repent. He took the Father’s infinite nausea toward these repentant humbled ones, the Father then vomited out His Son who dwelt in human nature, expelling His most treasured Child, His own flesh, His own soul, and expelling execrable sin with Him.
Yet, He could expel His Son from Himself but only so far, though it was far enough to destroy the sin that His detested human form represented, when He destroyed His Son’s life. By the death, the perfect, sinless death of His Son, going down into unconsciousness full of forgiving love, the Father finished His grievous nausea of the human race. He was satisfied by His Son’s character while clothed in abhorrent humanity, and the King was finally relieved of the toxic existence of sin.
Christ’s perfection and love answered every horrific ramification brought to life by the birth of sin in the human race. The wrath of God on His Son was His retching of all His sorrow for sin’s damage to His kingdom, especially to His most precious fallen humanity. His casting off of His beloved Son finished, and peace restored to His mind, He saw fit to raise His Son up to existence again; and then, once back in His arms, to pour out grace upon His new humanity from His relieved and restored heart.
Our Creator has built into the human frame a wonderful resource for object lessons. Jesus made use of this resource in all of His teachings. He put into the human body His image, which is His Father’s image. This makes us special, not by way of anything we’ve done, but simply by inheritance.
One of our built-in revelations of the Father is in the vomit reflex. Probably thousands of times each day around planet Earth, people eat something that upsets their stomach. They try to cope with the agony and hope to wait it out. They don’t want to vomit because vomiting tastes so horrible, so they wait in the hope that their body can resolve the upsetness by its own metabolism.
But, at length, the stomach having received no relief, the undesirable measure must be invoked. So, the sufferer gets a large bowl, and puts his mouth over it; yet often nothing happens. As badly as he wants to expel the poison in his tummy, his stomach cannot relieve itself. It has no will of its own; the brain must give it the command to regurgitate, but the brain remembers the revolting taste of vomit. The stomach needs an advocate for the brain.
So the man tries to encourage the stomach in its regurgitation reflex by coughing or dry heaving. This may or may not overcome the mind’s regret of the soon-coming bad taste in the mouth and move the stomach to heave up its putrid contents.
But if that doesn’t work, then the owner must put a wooden depressor or his finger down his throat to create a gagging reflex which is part of the whole vomit sequence, and then the signal goes to the stomach to throw up and rid itself of the substance that was wreaking havoc to the whole body.
Sin is selfishness. It uses others; it is wholly opportunistic. It feeds on others without reciprocating. Everything and everyone around it is nothing more than a host to live off of. Furthermore, it’s a disease that saps the vitality and leaves nothing in return; it’s a tapeworm that lives to starve its host. Without the constant supply from the donor, sin dies; but until its death it draws incessantly from all around, killing them and then moving on to more victims, leaving a wide swath of desolation. “Destruction and misery are in their ways: and the way of peace have they not known.” (Rom. 3:16,17). They are takers and not givers, not even thank-you givers. Sin makes men “lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, … unthankful, unholy,” “without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful.” (2Tim. 3:2;Rom. 1:31).
God hates sin. It has no place in His thoughts or His character or His will; and it has no place in His kingdom of saints. Its entrance has created the most intense turmoil to Him who is infinitely pure and self-forgetful. His soul has raged quietly since iniquity sprung up in the heart of its very first victim, Lucifer. God has shifted His government into high gear in response to its presence in His kingdom. His living room, the throne of the universe, has turned into a command and control room for battle, a war room, a damage control central, a triage unit for emergency surgery and decontamination, a sanctuary to quarantine infinite holiness and keep the pristine sinlessness and perfection of heaven untouched and uninfected by the spiritual virus of selfishness, to stanch the spread of rebellion.
Earth is situated in His front yard, just down the way in the galaxy we share. The presence of sin on Earth, right on front row of His auditorium, is an inescapable grief that loads Him down with a perpetual wracking pain. Human thought can never comprehend the infinite abhorrence and loathing that self-centered existence thrusts before Him. Sin is revoltingly unnatural to His creation, yet He must live in sin’s din, its stench, its horror.
But as much as God hates sin, He cannot stop wanting to be with His human carriers of the filthy disease. He loves them. So God has been bound in self-made torment by keeping our poisonous race alive. Between His loathing of sin and His desire to keep His faulty human race, this conflict, this infinite tension only the Son of God could understand. God’s human race is so precious to Him that He designed a way to reclaim them. Those who would choose can be reclaimed and reinstated after He had thrust them from His sight. But, far from an easy venture, He has devised the means “that His banished be not expelled from Him.” (2Sam. 14:14).
The plan for man’s salvation required God’s beloved Son to take the form of man which God could not look upon without convulsing in infinite nausea, lamentations, mourning, and woe. Were it not for the great desire to have us back in His bosom, He would not have let His Son forever lose “the body of heaven in his clearness” (Ex. 24:10). In man’s form the Son would intervene in resolving the King’s overwhelming pain. The Father could not self-medicate or doctor Himself to reconciliation with sin. But by His Son, the only human His Father could trust and rest in, Christ brought His Father to where He could safely void His kingdom of the children He loved but who preferred the lust for sin over the love for holiness and purity—a difficult judgment that required an advocate. The Son took upon Himself the work of restoring His character in all the sinners who chose to be humbled and to repent. He took the Father’s infinite nausea toward these repentant humbled ones, the Father then vomited out His Son who dwelt in human nature, expelling His most treasured Child, His own flesh, His own soul, and expelling execrable sin with Him.
Yet, He could expel His Son from Himself but only so far, though it was far enough to destroy the sin that His detested human form represented, when He destroyed His Son’s life. By the death, the perfect, sinless death of His Son, going down into unconsciousness full of forgiving love, the Father finished His grievous nausea of the human race. He was satisfied by His Son’s character while clothed in abhorrent humanity, and the King was finally relieved of the toxic existence of sin.
Christ’s perfection and love answered every horrific ramification brought to life by the birth of sin in the human race. The wrath of God on His Son was His retching of all His sorrow for sin’s damage to His kingdom, especially to His most precious fallen humanity. His casting off of His beloved Son finished, and peace restored to His mind, He saw fit to raise His Son up to existence again; and then, once back in His arms, to pour out grace upon His new humanity from His relieved and restored heart.
posted by David | 10:30 AM
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